It seems that there may have been foul play involving the Chinese BIGBANG fans in the popularity rankings chart of “Gaon Chart K-Pop Awards.”

On February 10, the chart ranking listed EXO at first place with 47% of votes while BIGBANG followed with 45% of votes.

The following day, a sudden increase in the votes for BIGBANG, rising to almost 75% of votes, was detected by netizens. EXO fans who have found it suspicious have questioned the officials from Gaon.

Gaon then released a notice by saying:

“Around 1-5 am of February 11, we have confirmed that unfair voting methods have been detected in an area in China. We discovered that through abusing methods such as ‘Mission Charge’ and ‘Fandom Mission’ at charging stations, they have irregularly gained voting points.

Therefore, we would be voiding all of the points which are confirmed to be irregular votes. In order to prevent similar irregular voting from occurring once again, we would be shutting down ‘Mission Charge’ and ‘Fandom Mission,’ so we would ask for your understanding.

We are in the process of working on revealing the number of votes obtained due to requests from a number of users. We plan to reveal the overall number and daily number of votes for the third round of voting starting at noon today.

We are incredibly sorry for causing distress to everyone who use the app.

We would be taking care of this as soon as possible and return the voting process back to normal.”